Semantics: How We Communicate

Dear Readers,
A discussion with a friend led me to a deep thought process on Semantics and why we have so much trouble with communication with each other. My friend commented "Semantics will kill us if we let it! Good thing we are persistent in learning loving communication! By persistent I mean that I feel comfortable in clarifying myself...and hope yo do too."
After a restless night I awoke with the following rolling around in my head insisting to come out.
What is Semantics? I know we say, its all just semantics and ugh, its semantics, etc, etc., but what exactly is semantics. You probably know this, so just bear with me, I'm learning this morning. I found this lengthy article describing what Semantics's actually is, you might want to refer to the site for a deeper analysis than mine:

http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~rthomaso/documents/general/what-is-semantics.html

I have always looked at the word and thought of semantics as a catch phrase to brush off anothers opinion when I did not agree with that opinion. I never looked below the sentence I was reading to see what was truly being said. I'm not sure we can see what another person is really saying and meaning without asking them to clarify what they are saying. Before I found this article I came up with my own explanation and a question to help me understand how to understand what another person is saying when I take what they say as a negative statement and an injury to me directly.
The question that needs to be asked is: am I interpreting what is being said to me as it was meant to be heard, or have I put my own interpretation to what was said and come up with an inaccurate meaning, then judging what was said as a negative gesture, when it was actually something very different.
Consider the following sentence:
The man's face is blue.
Meaning:
The man painted his face blue. or
The man is feeling the emotion we call blue, and it is showing on his face. or
The man is oxygen deprived, and his skin tone is actually turning blue from lack of oxygen.
I'm sure there are other perceptions of what blue means to many other people. So this brings us to our own perception, the following web site discussing Ruiz's Four Agreements really hits how we perceive meaning on the head.

http://www.toltecspirit.com/

We get our perceptions from a lifelong learning unique to each of us, then, in my opinion, when we try to communicate with each other, we may not understand or accept that each of us interprets what is being said according to how we each understand and define what is being said and then we clash. Then depending on our level of mental and human development, we interact either with anger and attack or with diplomacy. The Fight or Flight instinct prevails. Even fight or flight has levels based upon where we are developmentally. Fight: We might actually punch someone, we might write a scathing letter, we might gossip and slander behind each others backs, did you see what she said now? Flight: We might actually run away from the conflict and then play the innocent, pretending not to know what someone is talking about when confronted, we might put up a wall and refuse contact by not answering emails and telling ourselves we are just too busy, we might avoid the issue in one way or another. Both aspects are natural to us, its not right or wrong, nor good or bad, it just is how we have learned to cope with life and each other. This is how we survive.

Then one day we start to wake up and we begin to see past our ego's and we want to change our wiring, change our point of view and adopt philosophies that encourage peace, love, and harmony. What are we doing when we start this change? We are doing more than just saying we are changing. We are asking our entire chemical and electrical body system and our brain to stop working the way it has for however many years we have lived and to reboot with a new program. What happens as we start to do this, is it easy, just a new download? No, we hit RESISTANCE!!! and WOW what resistance it is. Not only do we ourselves resist change but everyone around us also resists us changing. This is not a bad thing, its a natural human thing.

So as we start the process of change we also start the process of dream interruption within and around us. Dream interruptions are when we either intentional or unintentionally disturb another persons dream, by dream, I mean, how a person views their life, what they believe, and what they know as a truth for them. This dream is how a person survives in the world. So when we are changing our dream, changing how we live, what we believe and how we interact, we disturb others around us who rely on our dream to validate their dream. We are so interconnected that any kind of change effects each and every one of us on some level.

However, changing our dream is not an easy task, we slip up, make mistakes, fall back down, what have you. Its very difficult to change brain wiring, just ask any addict, there will be and are steps backwards as we go forward. At the same time since we are all interconnected, the attempt to change our dream sends ripples out to every other dream on the entire planet, and if you believe in ET's and inter and multi-dimensional life, to every other life form in existence. We get The Butterfly Effect or The 100th Monkey Effect, just google if you are unfamiliar with these terms.

Some of those ripples just flow over gently and cause little clash, but some of those ripples meet other ripples who are connected on a deeper level with us, whether through past life, or current life affairs. These are the people we have agreed to experience, experiences with, and then the lightning flashes and the thunder roars, the extent of the clash will depend on where each participant is developmentally.

What you and I, dear readers are doing right now, writing and reading this blog, trying to understand the meanings behind the words of communication written here is making ripples. One someone out there is connecting and getting an Aha! Another may be getting angry at what they are reading. Another may be confused. We are connecting in many different ways, listening to each other, loving and communicating with each other and that my friends is making ripples in all our dreams. Ripples that sweep across the planet and into both inner and outer space, making changes, disturbing the planetary dream.

This brings me to one last thought about words and how we say them.
When saying something while in a state of emotional pain, it is so important to clarify the full meaning of what is said. Remembering to clarify a statement so that its actual meaning is clear is very important. Remembering that if we read something that sounds awful to us, not to jump to conclusions, be insulted, take whatever is said personally and in anger assuming the worst rather than the positive, but rather to take the courage to ask for clarification, is very important. Asking, what did you mean by that statement is very important. We harm each other when we assume to know what another person means when they speak to us when they are in pain. We harm each other when we make an assumption and then spread it to others without knowing the meaning behind the communication. I read in an article the other day that issues between parents and their adult children occur worldwide, however its at the highest rate and the most violent in the United States, this is food for thought. http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_parents_can_start_to_reconcile_with_their_kids/  W/deepest respect. Find your voice.